The time has come to close the IWMW 2011 blog as we no longer intend to publish any more significant posts. The blog will remain here as a resource for you to use though comments have now been closed.

Blog Statistics

We are publishing the following statistics for future reference. They are intended to inform others about the lifecycle of the blog.

Use of the Blog

Active Dates: Posts were published on this blog between 8th June 2011 and 1st September 2011.Number of posts: 59 published posts, 12 of which were guest posts.Number of comments: 35 comments were published, consisting of 3 comments and 32 automated ping messages.Usage statistics: Between 5 July and 31 August there were 1,418 visits to the blog and 2,471 page views. There were 157 visits on 25 July, the day before the start of the IWMW 2011 event. A graph of the usage statistics are embedded below.

During IWMW’s life we’ve always done our best to make sure that details reach the right target audience. Once you’ve been to IWMW and are in the loop you’re more than likely to hear about when the next one will be; but there may be people we’d like to come along but who don’t find out about it.

We thought it would be useful to share our promotion channels and give people the opportunity to comment on what we do and make suggestions for next year.

We have in the past also sent email information about the event to webmaster@foo.ac.uk. Recently this hasn’t been particularly successful as the webmaster email address appears to be defunct or is being used as a support rather than a contact address.

If we have time we have printed out flyers and taken them to relevant events to hand out.

However at this year’s event a number of people told us that they hadn’t heard of the event until this year and could possible have missed the booking deadline. Are we missing other dissemination channels? Is there anywhere else we could be or should be promoting future IWMW events?

In bringing IWMW11 to a close, Brian Kelly invited a number of web managers to share their experiences and reflect on what the event and the community had contributed to their professional practices…

Milly Shaw from the University of Sunderland described their recent experiments with student bloggers, who were encouraged to blog about university life as a way of demonstrating authentic university life to prospective students in their Lives Online project.

Claire Gibbon from the University of Bradford described her department’s efforts to make themselves known within the institution and the local community as expert advisors on social media, which has involved running social media surgeries for staff and local community groups to help bring them onto campus.

Duncan Ireland from the University of Strathclyde described the activities of the Scottish Regional Group, which has been meeting informally every 3-4 months as a result of bonds forged at previous IWMW events. They often meet to discuss specific topical issues and collect together just prior to or immediately after IWMW each year to help extend the conversations associated with the event.

Miles Banbery from the University of Kent described work at this year’s event which has led to the establishment of an ongoing collaborative document designed to pull together ideas about how to maximise institutional webmaster impact. The hope is that this will prove to be a valuable resource to the community going forward, and to which they can all contribute.

And finally, Christopher Gutteridge demonstrated what his team has been doing with cookie data for the catering department at the University of Southampton, showing what can be done with linked data. Their exploits are all documented at their department blog, which was inspired by previous IWMW events. Chris emphasised the need to encourage each other to blog more, especially by commenting.

Brian drew attention to the new UK HE Web Professionals LinkedIn group that was started as a result of discussions at this year’s event, and the launch of the Institutional Web Team blog aggregator. Both of these things are designed to help support the community throughout the year so that the energy and ideas generated at IWMW11 are not lost when everyone returns to their day jobs.

With the event Twitter stream was a-buzz with discussion about the formation of further regional groups and collaborations, Brian and Marieke formally brought IWMW11 to a close.

Paul Walk from UKOLN introduced us to the idea of the strategic developer and the work of the DevCSI project to foster innovation through local developers in order to create an environment in which strategic developers can emerge to benefit the sector.

The Cost of Innovation

Paul began his presentation by questioning the costs of the current trend towards outsourcing development and IT expertise in HE institutions, highlighting the lost capacity of innovate that can result from the practice…

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Walk: Discussing the temptation for universities to cut away the ability to innovate #iwmw11 #p8

DevCSI

Within this context, Paul introduced the work of the JISC-funded DevCSI project, which seeks to foster innovation by supporting local developer.

He outlined the results of their research into the general standing of local developers within the institution, and described the training and community building opportunities that the project has facilitated, particularly through their Dev8D event.

Regulation

Dave highlighted some of the issues associated with regulation in this area, including the lack of clarity surrounding the wording of new legislation and the agendas of advertisers, who push for self-regulation.

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Raggett: The advertising industry would like us to believe that self-regulation is the way. But is it? #iwmw11 #p7

Users

Dave was keen to put these issues into context by considering them from the users’ perspective, noting that many of the suggested solutions so far do not support the average user in a realistic manner.

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Raggett: Most users do not want to touch the browser settings, but do not track is opt in by default #iwmw11 #p7

Martin Hamilton walked the audience through key lessons derived from his experience leading the Google Apps implementation at Loughborough University and the Google Apps for Education UK User Group, and subsequently co-authoring an institutional Web 2.0 good practice guide.

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Hamilton: Web 2.0 changes the relationship between the university, its academics and its users #iwmw11 #p6

Experiences of Embedding Web 2.0

Martin began his presentation with a walk through of his own experiences of embedding Web 2.0 technologies in various contexts at Loughborough University, including his own work with Google Apps and work using Facebook to create a community around a new course. He also discussed the various policy development issues he has encountered within the institution as a result of this work, and the supporting evidence they have been collecting to inform policy decisions.

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Hamilton: Loughborough has been playing with a wired, hired and fired traffic light system to judge what tools to look at #iwmw11 #p6

Tools

Martin went on to discuss web 2.0 tools in the context of institutional use and investment. He advocated that web managers should know about and have opinions about these tools, so they can play a role in guiding institutional use and policy making.

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Hamilton: There is a tendency to assume that all web 2.0 things will be free. Ning’s £20 per year fee was seen as too high! #iwmw11 #p6

In his almost obligatory annual video interview for IWMW, Miles Banbery from the University of Kent reflects on the quality of the sessions at this year’s IWMW and discusses the length of his take away list…